Ancient Nubians Drank Antibiotic-Laced Beer 249
eldavojohn writes "A new analysis of millennia old mummy bones (abstract; full article is paywalled) shows high concentrations of tetracycline, which indicates empirical knowledge and use of antibiotics — most likely consumed in beer. The researchers traced the source of the antibiotics to the soil bacteria streptomyces present in the grain used to ferment the beer. Astonishingly enough, 'Even the tibia and skull belonging to a 4-year-old were full of tetracycline, suggesting that they were giving high doses to the child to try and cure him of illness.' The extent of saturation in the bones leads the scientists to assert that the population regularly consumed tetracycline antibiotics knowing that it would cure certain sicknesses."
Where are they now? (Score:4, Interesting)
So what killed the kid? (Score:3, Interesting)
The sickness, the tetracycline, or simply the high dose of beer?
Either that or (Score:5, Interesting)
Ancient nubians used moldy grain when making beer.
(Yes, streptomyces is a bacteria, but colonies look like and are often confused with mold.)
Sometimes a duck is just a duck. Sometimes, a duck is a cornish game hen in an inflatable suit.
This isn't surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a lot of ancient evidence of indirect antibiotic use, usually through moulds grown on specific substrates (e.g. specific type of bread). The ancient use of penicillin is another good example of this. Of course, they didn't known what compound was responsible for this, but they nevertheless found efficient way to produce it and found out when it was good to used it to cure specific illnesses.
What's particularly interesting about TFA, is that this research seems to suggest that the use of antibiotics was very common and systematic.
Bacterial drug resistance (Score:3, Interesting)
Damn Fools (Score:5, Interesting)
They did not consume high concentrations of tetracycline.
They knew beer was good and healthy for people, and consumed very high concentrations of beer!
Bless the Gods Byggver and Silenus for BEER!
Re:I know nothing about this field of science (Score:3, Interesting)
I recall reading that Egyptian mummies were found with traces of moldy bread on wounds, so they probably did have a knowledge of antibiotics in Africa. Many (like Ramses II) also had traces of cocaine and tobacco, indicating they likely had contact with the Americas - that or the formerly verdant parts of the Sahara were capable of growing coke and tobacco and eventually the plants died off there.
Western Europeans like to think they discovered numerous things like, say, the earth is round or that it revolves around the sun, but the Greeks (for one) knew that long before and those things had to be rediscovered, so there would be no surprise in my mind if this is yet another piece of lost knowledge.
Re:Not really, no (Score:3, Interesting)
The cool thing to me is that they found a consistent use of anti-biotic laced grain that held up through the brewing process. I wonder how this would effect societies. If one group had children growing up with less infections and sickness, would they have more children reaching adulthood? Would these people end up growing up taller/stronger? I wonder how many early empires got their start do to something weird like this?